Government Documents and Publications

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  1925 - Handbook of the Indians of California, A. L. Kroeber

  This book by a leading American anthropologist includes demographics, linguistic relations, social structures, folkways, religion, material culture, and much more. It includes surveys of the Yurok, Pomo, Maidu, Yokuts, and Mohave, as well as 479 illustrations and 40 maps. The book is a history in that it tries to reconstruct and present the scheme within which these people in ancient and more recent times lived their lives. It is concerned with their civilization—at all events the appearance they presented on discovery, and whenever possible an unraveling, from such indications as analysis and comparison now and then afford, of the changes and growth of their culture.

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  1942 - Aboriginal Navigation off the Coasts of Upper and Baja California, Bulletin 151, Anthropological Papers, No. 39, Robert F. Heizer and William C. Massey

  This 1942 Bureau of American Ethnology report discusses the differences in coastal topography and the particular types of boats used in the local environments: Tule balsas, log dugouts, log rafts and plank canoes. The Pacific coast, from the Oregon-California boundary to the southern tip of Baja California stretches about 1,600 miles and embraces some nineteen degrees of latitude. Environmentally this long coastal area can be divided into separate provinces that influenced the type of boats used for navigation by the aboriginals.

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  1851-1852 - Eighteen Unratified Treaties between California Indians and the United States

  A typed copy of the original treaties made between 1851 and 1852. The eighteen treaties were signed by members of California Indian tribes and any one of three Treaty Commissioners whose appointments had been authorized by President Fillmore and the United States Senate. The treaties were never ratified by the United States Senate.

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  1877 – Tribes of California, Contributions to North American Ethnology, Vol. III, Stephen Powers

  This 1877 report references 36 Tribes of California including, but not limited to, their habitats, customs, sustenance, mythology and language. The report concludes with chapters on General Facts regarding the natives of California, Aboriginal Botany and thoughts on prehistoric California. [Pages 4 and five of the Preface are missing.]

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  1899 – Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology - 1896-97, Part 2, J. W. Powell, Charles C. Royce, Cyrus Thomas

  Report to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution concerning the respective rights of European nations in the newly discovered territory, foreign policy toward the Indians, Colonial policy toward the Indians and United States policy toward the Indians. The report includes a Schedule of Treaties and Acts of Congress Authorizing Allotments of Land in Severalty and a Schedule of Land Cessions.

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  2000 - A Line Through the Past – Historical and Ethnographic Background for the Branch Canal, California State Water Project, Coastal Branch Series Paper Number 1.

  This 2000 publication of the San Luis Obispo County Archaeological Society documents the major prehistoric and historic studies carried out in connection with the California State Water Project, Coastal Branch, Phase II. The State Water Project delivers water from the California Aqueduct to San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties. The California Department of Parks and Recreation along with various cultural resource management firms, conducted the cultural resources studies and reports for the State Water Project.

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  2005 – An Ethnogeography of Salinan and Northern Chumas Communities – 1769 to 1810

  This report provides a new understanding of the Salinan and Northern Chumash communities as they might have existed at Spanish contact, between 1769 and 1810. It relies mainly upon evidence in the registers of baptism, confirmation, marriage, and burial for missions San Antonio, San Luis Obispo, and San Miguel. Although the registers contain the names of 205 rancherías (villages and multi-village communities), they contain few direct clues about the placement of those rancherías on the landscape. To aid locational identification, all of the J.P. Harrington notes on the Salinan and Chumash were reviewed. The present study is the next level in a series of kinship-network-based ethnohistoric studies to be carried out for Coast Range areas in California.

  To establish relative locations for the 205 rancherías, the report used proximity information garnered from a study of kinship ties between rancherías, as documented in the mission registers. Because clues about inter-ranchería kinship ties were scattered among various mission register entries, the data was reorganized to reconstruct a regional ethnogeography. Computer databases were built and used to sort and cross-reference life history information for over 4,000 people baptized at Mission San Antonio, over 2,400 people baptized at Mission San Antonio, and over 3,000 people baptized at Mission San Luis Obispo. A population distribution model was developed to examine and modify assumptions regarding the density of village groups across the study area. By adjusting groups to the east, west, north, and south, a map of the social landscape that made sense in terms of general environmental parameters was developed. The model was exhaustively applied to the coastal regions from Lopez Point south to San Luis Obispo Bay.

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  2009 - Ohlone/Costanoan Indians of the San Francisco Peninsula and their Neighbors, Yesterday and Today by Randall Milliken, Laurence H. Shoup, and Beverly R. Ortiz

  This 2009 report studies the Ohlone/Costanoan people who are the descendants of speakers of six related Costanoan languages that were spoken in west central California, from San Francisco Bay to Monterey Bay, when Spanish missionaries and settlers arrived in the 1770s. The San Francisco Peninsula lands of the Golden Gate Recreation Area is in one of the six language territories, San Francisco Bay Costanoan. In this study, the prehistoric and contact-period culture of the San Francisco Bay Costanoans is described and their culture is compared to the cultures of surrounding language groups (other Costanoan language groups and non-Costanoan language groups of adjacent west-Central California areas). The Mission Period history and modern history of the San Francisco Bay Costanoan descendants is traced, as well as that of the descendants of the other Costanoan language speakers. The report addresses the degree of historic cultural resemblance among today’s separate descendant groups, people referred to as Ohlone/Costanoans, Ohlones, or Costanoans.